Black Orchids is Rex Stout’s darkest novel, written in 1940 and 1942. Nero as a name is often construed to mean “dark” or “black,” suggesting that black orchids are Nero’s special province.
Calling Black Orchids a novel is not strictly correct; it is two novellas, loosely knit together with a few paragraphs of inserted narration from Wolfe’s assistant, Archie Goodwin. The first depicts Wolfe’s acquisition of the black flowers. In the second, Wolfe sends a spray of the dark posies for the coffin of his client, whose murder he eventually solves.
The first novella displays the worst sides of Wolfe’s character. To get the orchids, Wolfe blackmails their owner by threatening to reveal the aristocratic fancier’s involvement in murder, greedily insisting on all the specimens for himself. Then he tricks the murderer into gassing himself with Wolfe’s own fumigation setup. In real life, Wolfe would be lucky to get off with second-degree murder. On top of that, the novella’s inciting killing occurred when Archie pulled a string that discharged a pistol and drove a bullet into the top of the victim’s skull. The deaths in the first novella were all at the hand of the Wolfe establishment on a greedy mission. Black orchids indeed.
The second novella is similarly dark. Wolfe is hired by a woman who arranges swanky novelty parties and whom Wolfe clearly detests as a frivolous snob, but he takes her money. Archie investigates, attending a flamboyantly gruesome outdoor cocktail party with an obnoxious chimpanzee, a pair of cranky black bears, and an alligator that causes Archie to wound his hand. The human guests are equally sullen and unpleasant. When the chimp knocks a tray of drinks from the butler’s hands, glass shatters, and the client’s toe is cut. The wound is treated with what appears to be iodine but contains live tetanus bacilli. Three days later, the client dies a tortured and miserable death from lockjaw. The farewell scene is uttered from between clenched teeth and interrupted with bone-cracking spasms. Nero sends black orchids to the funeral but refuses to investigate until he is angered by the hapless Inspector Cramer. To spite the police, Wolfe finally acts, and the murder is eventually caught through an act of self-mutilation. Yikes.
Peeking under the covers into Stout’s life may be questionable criticism, but the early 1940s when Black Orchids was written were fraught. The Nazis were ascendant in Europe and the U.S. was torturing itself over the decision to enter the war. Stout was in the center of the argument, urging American entry and contending with the America First movement that opposed involvement. John McAleer, Stout’s biographer, says that Stout began having trouble with indigestion, which is echoed in Wolfe resorting to Amphogel antacid in the second novella. Wolfe’s execution of the first murderer with cyanide gas is also telling as rumors of holocaust gas chambers were beginning to enter the American consciousness. I find it easy to think that Black Orchids reflected Stout’s tense mood as World War II began.
Dark stories are not bad stories. Last week was at least my fourth reading of the two novellas and I’ve enjoyed them every time including this last.
But on this read, I noticed their darkness. In most of Stout’s stories, Wolfe’s brownstone in mid-town Manhattan is an island of stability where orchids are always tended for two hours twice a day, meals are never interrupted by business, and the conversation is always witty. The gourmet meals are painted as exotic, but they are closer to Sunday dinner in Stout’s home Kansas than Le Bernardin. Wolfe may be a sophisticated émigré from the Balkans, but he usually acts more like a shrewd mid-western autodidact. Most of Stout’s work is in some way optimistic and uplifting, but he slipped deep shade into this pair of novellas. It’s quite an achievement to write stories as gloomy as Black Orchids and yet leave the impression that they are typically placid Nero and Archie tales.